Stijn van Lieshout is currently getting his Master's degree in Digital Marketing at the Smurfit School of Business in Dublin. He is passionate about SEO, entrepreneurship and everything that goes viral on the web.

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What pops up in your mind if you think about the ads of car insurance company Geico?

Probably a combination of talking animals, a catchy jingle and a fair dose of random dry humour. Their remarkable video ads attract millions of viewers and have become a huge success. Their latest commercial is based on the same success formula but added one secret ingredient to it, which made it become their most viral video thus far; “a day related trigger."

In the video you see a happy camel walking through an office, asking some grumpy employees very enthusiastically to guess what day it is. Eventually one grumpy female employee responds: “It's hump day” (read: Normal Wednesday that is a “hump” towards the weekend). Hence, in stark contrast with the camel, all of the other employees look depressed.

The video ends like most Geico commercials do: with two guys (Ronny and Jimmy) playing a jingle on their guitar. Then one guy askes the other: “How happy would someone be by saving hundreds of dollars on their car insurance by switching to Geico?” Response: “Happier than a camel on Wednesday."

So the difference between this ad compared to previous ones is that it focuses on a particular day. But what difference would that make in sharing numbers? Apparently lots. At the time of writing the video has been shared more than 3,7 million times. This makes the video by far the most viral Geico commercial ever made.

The sharing data provide hard evidence that a day related trigger is responsible for the video's success. Every seven days the data show a dramatic sharing peak. It might not surprise you that this day happens to be on “hump day." The pattern is so strong that during the other days of the week sharing decreases to almost 0.

Professor Jonah Berger, widely regarded as a viral content expert, discusses this daily peak pattern in his book “Contagious." As an example he gives a viral YouTube hit of Rebecca Black, a 13-year old girl, singing a terrible song entitled “Friday." This song became one of the most viral videos of 2011. His analysis showed that it was not the terrible singing but rather the day related trigger in the video that made it contagious. The sharing and searching statistics showed similar peaks on Friday to Geico’s hump day ad on Wednesday.

Professor Berger describes triggers as stimuli (sights, smells and sounds) in the surrounding environment that determine which thoughts and ideas are top of mind. If you see a picture of an airplane, you might think about your last holiday. Or if you hear an advertisement for fruits, you might remember that you ran out of orange juice. Triggers can be strong or weak, frequent or less frequent. The strength of a day related trigger is that is shows up every seven days for 24 hours.

During the day there are countless moments imaginable that might trigger us to think about our day. It might be because you are tired of work and are thinking towards the weekend or because you’re Wednesday turned out great for a change. If the stimuli is strong enough then it pulls a trigger in your brain that makes you think about that remarkable ad with the talking camel you saw on YouTube or television. What happens then is that people relate their current mood to the characters in this video. If you are having a boring day behind your desk you will relate to the employees. In case something just made hump day your happy day, you will relate to the camel. You then decide to share your mood with others and use the Geico video to give context to your current mood and share a funny video at the same time.

Geico’s latest commercial shows us once again that a day related trigger can be a powerful mechanism towards stimulating sharing. Do you know any other videos that have a day related trigger embedded in them?